articles

Shank’s Mare: A Transcultural

Journey of Puppetry Creation and
Performance
Claudia Orenstein

This article looks at the production Shank’s Mare, a collaboration between North
American puppeteer Tom Lee and Nishikawa Koryu V, master of the Japanese kuruma
ningyō or cart puppetry traditions and shows how the production and creative process
blended different models of puppet performance, while also contributing to Nishikawa’s
greater project of finding new ways to invigorate and preserve his traditional art. It offers
a brief history and understanding of kuruma ningyō, a puppetry form less well-known
nationally and internationally than Japan’s bunraku tradition, and an account of
Shank’s Mare’s creation process and international tour to New York and two venues in
Japan. It invites consideration of a tree as a model for understanding traditional forms
and how they might maintain a recognizable core while also drawing from various roots
and giving birth to new works.
Claudia Orenstein is Professor of Theatre at Hunter College with an appointment at
the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her books include The Routledge Companion to
Puppetry and Material Performance (co-editor), The World of Theatre:
Tradition and Innovation (with Mira Felner), and Festive Revolutions: The
Politics of Popular Theatre and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Recent articles
include “Women in Indian Puppetry: Negotiating Traditional Roles and New
Possibilities” (Asian Theatre Journal 32, no. 2: 493–517) and “The Object in
Question: A Peek Into the FIDENA – International Puppetry Festival” (TDR 59,
no. 2: 164–169). She has served as Board Member of the Association of Asian
Performance and UNIMA-USA and is Associate Editor for Asian Theatre Journal. She
also works as a dramaturg for productions using puppetry including Stephen Earnhart’s
Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Tom Lee’s Shank’s Mare.

Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 35, no. 1 (Spring 2018). © 2018 by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.
2 Orenstein

The word “tradition” connotes continuity, repetition, consis-

tency, and timelessness. However, theatrical traditions, manifest and
embodied in performers and performance contexts of each new
generation and subject to changing economic, social, political, and
cultural forces, are necessarily variant, morphing, and transforming
over time. More than that, we might see them as expressing elements of
a life trajectory with moments of emergence, of growth and expansion,
of establishment, even of death and possibly resurrection and renewal.
One useful life metaphor for theatrical traditions may be less that of a
human biological life and more that of a tree with roots, which might
spread more deeply underground than one anticipates, a trunk, which
can provide a strong, identifiable center, and branches that can reach
out in a multitude of directions, some flowering more fully than others
and eventually dropping their own seeds for further propagation of
new trees. This metaphor might productively move us away from trying
to define what is or is not “traditional” within a theatrical form, or even
looking at forms as “traditions in transition,” and, instead, offer
opportunities to understand the disparate relationships particular
performance practices have within a larger model of “tradition.” In
order to keep a theatrical tradition alive and healthy, those involved
might need to tend to all parts of this living art-organism at once.
Shank’s Mare,1 a production born from a collaboration between
U.S. puppeteer Tom Lee and Nishikawa Koryu V, a master of traditional
Japanese kuruma ningyō or cart puppetry, is, on the one hand, an
intercultural collaboration between two artists and two artistic forms, but
perhaps can also be viewed as a new branch of kuruma ningyō itself, part of
the tending to this tradition that has fallen to Nishikawa Kōryu as iemoto, or
head of the school, troupe, family of Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō (Cart
Theatre of Hachiōji City), as he seeks not only to promote the familiar
repertoire, but to expand the form’s connection to other theatrical
models and contexts and keep it relevant in the present. In clarifying this
relationship between classical work and new work, Nishikawa says,
It takes time to understand Japanese classic stories. The classics seem
and sound too difficult for the people who are not used to the style of
storytelling. That is why I try to work with the numerous styles of actors,
chanters and music in hopes for the younger audience not to be
hesitant to keep coming back to the theater and try to find their own
connection with the classic pieces. (Nishikawa 2016)2

Kuruma Ningyō
Kuruma ningyō, or cart puppetry, is itself both its own distinct
theatrical tradition and an outgrowth of the puppetry form known
SHANK’S MARE 3

generally now as bunraku, but which is more precisely ningyō jōruri, a

larger designation for a theatrical model that united puppet
manipulation, jōruri style storytelling, and playing of the three-stringed
shamisen into a single theatrical genre towards the end of the sixteenth
century. In the eighteenth century the form attained new heights of
artistic achievement with the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon
(1653–1725), who brought literary depth to the storytelling and,
beginning in 1686 (Leiter 2006: 14), the new chanting style of
Takemoto Gidayu (1651–1724), shin jōruri, which proved so impressive
and popular that it set the model for future performers and today
gidayu is the term for all chanters in the Japanese puppet theatre.
The development of sannin zukai, a three-person manipulation
technique, added further to the success and popularity of ningyō jōruri.
Using three people to manipulate one puppet allowed for large,
detailed figures to display an extensive range of movement and
emotional expression and rival their human counterparts at the kabuki
theatre for dynamic physical action. This performance style appealed to
the restless audiences in Osaka and Kyoto who craved novelty and
excitement onstage. The sannin zukai method, created by Yoshida
Bunzaburō, debuted in the puppet theatre in 1734, in a performance of
the scene “Ninin Yakko” (Two Footman) from A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya
Doman (p. 477). The use of this three-person manipulation technique is
what international puppeteers associate most prominently with the
term “bunraku.” In the United States and elsewhere today, “bunraku-
style” puppetry has come to refer generally to using this three-person
model of puppet manipulation.
While the three-person manipulation technique brought new
energy to the puppet theatre and ningyō jōruri grew in popularity in the
eighteenth century, with troupes popping up all over Japan, in the
nineteenth-century, interest declined, and the three-person technique
now proved burdensome and costly because of the number of trained
puppeteers and apprentices required for any single production. Apart
from the National Bunraku Theatre, the few other companies that
survive from this period, like the Kuroda and Imada companies in Iida
City, are mostly classified today as amateur troupes, in which members
have other jobs and careers and do not devote themselves full-time to
performance. The strain of sustaining the full roster of performers
required for sannin zukai performances is among the important factors
that contributed to the further decline of traditional jōruri puppetry
performance in Japan.3
Searching for a new technique that would maintain the same
expressivity as the three-person manipulation model, but which would
require only a single puppeteer per puppet, and therefore be more
4 Orenstein

economically viable, in 1872, the first Nishikawa Koryu, working with a

troupe in the Tokyo area, developed a new form of manipulation,
establishing kuruma ningyō, or cart puppetry. In this model, a single
puppeteer sits on a small cart with wheels, a rokuro-kuruma. The puppets
have wooden pegs on the bottoms of their feet that the puppeteer holds
between his toes so that he can articulate the puppet’s legs by moving
his own; with each step he takes, he simultaneously propels his puppet
and his own wheeled-cart. This arrangement leaves the puppeteer’s
hands free to manipulate the puppet’s head and arms and opens up the
possibilities for using the stage since puppet, puppeteer, and cart can
travel relatively easily around the playing space in all directions. The
sannin zukai technique, by contrast, is played along a very horizontal
plane, and with three human figures in black behind each puppet, a
complex coordination is needed to make sure not only that the
different limbs of the puppet function in unison, but also that the
several human manipulators do not block the puppet figure from the
audience’s view. Kuruma ningyō, instead, offers a certain freedom in
staging by giving a single puppeteer the élan of the wheeled cart to
maneuver as he likes anywhere throughout the space.
Kuruma ningyō puppets also have the advantage of being able to
plant their feet—or at least the pegs on their feet with the puppeteer’s
own feet—firmly on the ground to stomp and connect with the earth.
Stomping is an important part of many Japanese performance forms
including nō and kabuki and finds its roots in early dances and rituals
associated with rice planting and the act of stomping rice seeds into the
earth. The eighth century text Kojiki or Records of Ancient Matters also
provides a famous origin story for performance in Japan where
stomping plays an important role. When the Sun Goddess Amaterasu
secludes herself in a cave, to draw her back out, Ame-no-Uzume, the
goddess of dawn and mirth, does a dance for all the other assembled
gods, stomping on an overturned bucket and exposing her genitals.
The noise and laughter at her dance brings Amaterasu from her cave,
allowing light, fecundity, and joy to replenish the earth. Stomping links
Japanese performance to this mythic event, a life-giving dance by and
for the gods. In bunraku, however, the puppets often float in the air, at
the height of the main puppeteer’s torso, especially as they walk. In
bunraku the foot-puppeteer will add rhythmic stomping to underscore a
puppet character’s dramatic foot movements and poses. In kuruma
ningyō, however, there is the added energy and impact of the puppet’s
direct contact with the ground.
Forfeiting two extra sets of hands to move large wooden puppets
that are more or less identical in size, structure, and weight to those in
bunraku—half to 2/3 human size with heavy costumes—is not without
SHANK’S MARE 5

challenges. Anyone trying kuruma ningyō for the first time will
immediately recognize the unusual demands placed on the puppet-
eer’s left thumb. The performer’s right hand works the puppet’s right
hand, by holding on to the puppet’s arm, while the performer’s left
hand works both the puppet’s head and the left arm, using only the left
thumb to move the puppet’s left arm. The positioning of this is such
that the left thumb has to maneuver the puppet’s left hand via a long
and heavy wooden stick while placed near the puppet’s neck, a fair
distance from the hand, offering very little leverage. The puppeteer
might favor the puppet’s right hand in some performance gestures, but
the character’s left hand needs to be able to perform strong and precise
movements, which masters of the art seem to do with ease.
Before implementing the wheeled-carts, the kuruma ningyō
performers in this region used the same sannin zukai technique as
ningyō jōruri, however, technically what they did was not ningyō jōruri
since, rather than using the distinctive jōruri form of chanting, from
which that tradition derives its name, they performed with an older
form of storytelling called sekkyō-bushi (sermon-ballad). In the eight-
eenth century, Confucian scholar Dazai Shundai in Dokugo (Mono-
logue) described jōruri as more erotic and sensuous than the early
sekkyō-bushi, which he found to have a more tragic character (Ishi 1989:
283). This is not too surprising as sekkyō-bushi derived from Buddhist
teachings, and, as R. Keller Kimbrough explains, what remained in the
later sekkyō-bushi performances as the tradition evolved “were the
terrible tales of those who, in earlier renditions of their stories, became
buddhas and deities as a result of their tribulations in the human realm”
(2013: 13). Jōruri, however, catered to the more sensual and
lighthearted world of the Edo period pleasure quarters.
Like other kuruma ningyō companies, the Hachiōji Kuruma
Ningyō troupe originally performed only to sekkyō-bushi. Nishikawa in
my interviews with him in 2016 noted that from 1972 to 1975, the
company performed with both sekkyō-bushi and jōruri style chanting,
with the jōruri style dominating afterwards. Kuruma ningyō, therefore,
while tracing its origins to the first use of wheeled carts in 1872, even in
its most “pristine“ form reveals a complex history and heritage in its
relationships to both ningyō jōruri and sekkyō-bushi and their relation-
ships to each other.4 At the height of the tradition there were as many as
ten full-time kuruma ningyō troupes in the Tokyo area. Today only three
companies exist, their names referring to the cities where they are
located: Kawano Kuruma Ningyō, Chikumazawa Kuruma Ningyō, and
Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō, with Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō being the only
professional troupe and one boasting a strong performance, touring,
and workshop schedule. Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō has carved out a
6 Orenstein

formidable place for itself on the local and national scene: The
company was designated an Intangible Cultural Asset of Hachiōji in
1962, an Intangible Folklore Cultural Asset of Tokyo in 1963, and a
National Intangible Folk Custom Cultural Asset in 1996 (http://
kurumaningyo.com/index.html, accessed 16 September 2016). Along
with these accolades that celebrate the company for upholding
Japanese performance heritage, under the direction of Nishikawa
Koryu V, the troupe has developed a prominent international
reputation as well, touring and offering workshops throughout the
world, and actively seeking out new collaborations and performance
situations in order to keep the form vibrant.
One of Nishikawa’s notable expansions of the tradition is in his
now somewhat reknown performance of a Flamenco dancer puppet,
which he has offered alongside more traditional material at festivals
and events around the world. In 1982, the company toured to Mexico
and was inspired for the first time to use non-classical material to make a
new dance to the Mexican folk tune “Cielito Lindo” (literally “lovely
sky,” but meaning little sweetheart). After this first venture, they created
several international puppet dance pieces to music from various
countries, but the Flamenco dancer is the one that has stayed longest in
the repertoire, perhaps because of its reliance on kuruma ningyō’s own
signature foot-stomping, a feature that supports Flamenco as well. This
number, which is the dance of a single female Flamenco puppet to
recorded Spanish music, capitalizes on the kuruma ningyō puppeteer’s
freedom of movement and ability to make the puppet stomp, but takes
the form out of its traditional Japanese framework and aesthetic. To
give the figure the strong, emphatic gestures of Flamenco requires a
unique physical and emotional bravado from the puppeteer that is
outside the stage vocabulary of Japanese traditional puppetry.
Moreover, in order to provide even more flexibility of movement
for puppet and puppeteer in this act, Nishikawa borrowed from yet
another Japanese puppetry form, otome bunraku, or young women’s
bunraku. Otome bunraku began in the 1920s in Osaka as an amateur
presentation by young women, with the first professional troupe
organized in the 1930s. It offered yet another method for a single
person to manipulate the large bunraku style puppets with a different
system from kuruma ningyō, and emphasized finding better support for
the weight of the puppet so young women could participate more easily.
Otome bunraku showcased young female performers at a time when
women were given new visibility on stage in many genres of Japanese
performance. This move was frequently as much a marketing ploy as
any artistic choice or equal opportunity bid. However, the growing
presence of women onstage was certainly influenced by the new
SHANK’S MARE 7

knowledge in Japan of foreign theatrical models where women

performed and the ongoing wave of interest in female performers
after the ban against them, instituted in 1629 in response to early
kabuki, was finally lifted in 1890 (Kano 2016: 442).
The otome bunraku performer, unlike the sitting kuruma ningyō
puppeteer, stands and, originally, used udegane, straps to attach the
puppet to the performer’s body on the puppeteer’s upper arms. Today
they primarily use the dogane technique, a metal fixture the puppeteer
wears on her upper body that connects the puppet to the center of the
puppeteer’s torso so that the majority of the puppet’s weight is
supported by the puppeteer’s core. The puppet’s feet are attached to
the puppeteer’s knees via metal prongs on cloth straps wrapped and
tied around each knee. The puppeteer wears a band on her head with
strings coming over the ears that connect on each side to the puppet’s
head; she moves the hands by holding on to the puppet’s arms with her
own hands. So the puppet hangs in front of the puppeteer’s torso, the
puppet’s head turning as the puppeteer turns her own head, and the
whole effect is to see the puppeteer as a shadow figure dancing in
unison with and behind the puppet.
For his Flamenco dance, Nishikawa still sits on the wheeled-cart
that is central to kuruma ningyō, but he has borrowed the harness and
the head gear of otome bunraku, which helps him lift the weight of the
puppet and allows an even further range of liberated actions and
instinctual connection between puppet and puppeteer in order to
execute the quick, fluid, and forceful movements of the Flamenco
dancer and the physical flourishes of the dancer’s head and arms.
Behind the puppet, spectators see Nishikawa’s face and posture
echoing the bold stance of the Flamenco figure.
Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō’s Flamenco dance is a new amalgam of
three different forms, Japanese kuruma ningyō, otome bunraku, and
Spanish Flamenco. Strict adherence to tradition has given way to
invention, adaptation, and practical considerations. This new model
does not affect other aspects of the traditional performance, but
expands the form’s creative potential and ability to keep growing and
appealing to more diverse audiences. Moreover, having the otome
bunraku controls at his disposal has offered Nishikawa other
opportunities to make use of them, as the one I witnessed in his
summer children’s workshop in July 2016, when two very slight girls
were given the otome bunraku supports to help them maneuver the
traditional puppets more easily during some practice sessions.
Nishikawa has explored other intercultural projects as well,
especially expanding the musical accompaniment of the form. He
notes that
8 Orenstein

FIGURE 1. Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō company member Hishiyama Satomi

demonstrates kuruma ningyō using the dogane harness and headgear borrowed
from otome bunraku. These are not generally used in kuruma ningyō. (Photo:
Claudia Orenstein)

Kuruma ningyō has collaborated with numerous musical instruments;

Violin, piano, cello ... we had even worked in a[n] opera. Used lots of
musical instruments from Western classical music. (Nishikawa 2016)

He also worked with Swedish puppeteer Michael Meschke on a

production of Don Quixote at Meschke’s Marionetteatern in Stockholm
and developed a theatre piece based on a Mongolian tale to the
accompaniment of the Mongolian stringed morin khuur (horse-headed
fiddle).
SHANK’S MARE 9

The Mongolian theatrical piece was based on a famous story that’s [i]n
a textbook in public schools. The whole premise was helpful for us to
reach out to the younger audience in Mongolia; they knew the story
and were feeling familiar with the music, therefore it led [to] deeper
and instant understanding of kuruma ningyō at the same time. I am sure
they have enjoyed the performance. (Nishikawa 2016)

Whether performing for audiences at home or abroad,

Nishikawa understands “It’s crucial for us to keep making bridges
between the audience and the classics so they’d feel more easy about
traditional pieces and find no difficulty to enjoy its stories” (Nishikawa
2016). So, ironically, Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō’s new experiments help
connect audiences to the traditional material. Nishikawa asserts that in
all the company’s endeavors, “Our aesthetic foundation and the
emotional motivation are always rooted in the classics” (Nishikawa
2016). New or intercultural work, rather than being a journey away
from the tradition, paves a road back to tradition itself.

Passing on Tradition
Shank’s Mare took Nishikawa and kuruma ningyō into an even
more involved intercultural, experimental, and collaborative process
than some of these other models, especially in incorporating video
projections and getting Nishikawa to use his own traditional puppets in
new ways. Through his background of experience, Nishikawa had
already demonstrated his ability to expand the tradition while
understanding the important role classical aesthetics and technique
play in any new venture, how old ways and new creativity feed each
other. As Nishikawa said of Shank’s Mare, which has performed in New
York, at two venues in Japan, and had further performances in the
United States in Atlanta, Amherst (MA), Detroit, and locations in
Hawaii, “Shank’s Mare is giving us [an opportunity] to reach out to the
broader audience all over the world. I am excited about the possibility
of how far we could reach out” (Nishikawa 2016).
Tom Lee came to the project with a strong understanding of the
art of kuruma ningyō, as well as a theatrical aesthetic fed from growing up
in Hawaii, studying at Carnegie Mellon, and touring with both LaMama
and Yara Arts Group to places such as Siberia, Ukraine, Mongolia, Italy,
Greece, and Austria (Tom Lee 2016b). He first met Nishikawa in 2005
when, with the support of an NEA/TCG Career Development Program
for Designers, he travelled to Japan. During that trip he spent two weeks
training in kuruma ningyō and has continued to find opportunities for
further practice in short periods over subsequent years. Lee first used
the kuruma ningyō manipulation model in building puppets for Martin
Halpern’s chamber opera Odysseus and Ajax in 2005/2006 and then for
10 Orenstein

Ko’olau in 2007/2008, a work of Lee’s own devising, based on the true

story of Kalua’iko’olau who, diagnosed with Hansen’s disease (leprosy)
in Hawaii in 1892, escaped with his family to the mountains to avoid
being sent to the Kalaupapa leper colony (Cataluna Lee 2008). In a
process integral to Lee’s production style, the show mixed puppetry
with videos and live-feed projections.
Lee began conceiving of Shank’s Mare in 2013 with the goal of
not just borrowing kuruma ningyō manipulation for his own project, as
he had done in the past, but of creating a new theatrical piece within
which the traditional form itself, done by Nishikawa on stage, could
somehow live. Lee was exploring how to honor and preserve tradition
while creating new work and looking to build an opportunity for an
artistic collaboration with his teacher. Foremost in his mind was the
theme “what is it that we pass on to the next generation?” derived in
part from a concern about how kuruma ningyō, which he admires so
much, can continue to live on into the future, but also as part of his
personal contemplations as the father of four young children.
The theme also spoke to Nishikawa and his responsibility and
concerns for passing on his tradition. His own son and only child,
Nishikawa Sō, in his early twenties, having missed out on early training
by going away to school as a youngster, is uncertain about taking up the
simultaneous privilege, task, and burden of devoting his life to
puppetry as he pursues history studies in college. The main performers
in the company are all about Nishikawa’s age, in their sixties. The
answer to who constitutes the next generation of kuruma ningyō
performers after them is a bit unclear. As he confronts this issue,
Nishikawa is even letting go of the idea that the puppeteers of classical
roles for public presentations should remain men only (Nishikawa
2017). The possible next generation of students coming up the line are
now in their early twenties, or younger, drawn primarily from the
summer workshops Nishikawa has been hosting at his theatre studio for
several years. In the workshops students learn the basics of puppet
manipulation and how to build some of the tools needed for
performance. Hishiyama Satomi, now in college, has taken part in
the workshops since middle school. Over the course of her years in the
workshops, she has built an entire puppet, sewed its clothes, and made
her own wheeled-cart. Students like Hishiyama come back each
summer to continue learning while serving as models and instructors
for novice participants. Living in Hachiōji, Hishiyama and other
committed young artists also take part in events and training hosted by
Nishikawa throughout the year. Following the Japanese model, they
slowly become part of the Hachiōji company-family by making
themselves available to help wherever needed.5 Yet none of the young
SHANK’S MARE 11

performers as yet has the full set of skills and repertoire required of
professional performers, so a gap exists between the older generation
of current performers and the younger generation, with a bit of lost
generation in the middle.6 There are few if any performers in their
thirties, forties, or fifties, especially men, as traditionally prescribed, to
guarantee full, high quality performances and teaching in a continuous
stream into the future. There remains a lot of material for any
interested younger artists to absorb, and they need to demonstrate
ongoing commitment to the art and the troupe. Nonetheless, the
joyful, lively environment Nishikawa creates in his workshops goes a
long way to attracting students to kuruma ningyō and inspiring them to
come back for continued training and involvement. Nishikawa also
frequently does presentations at schools and other venues around the
country and abroad to encourage more widespread interest in the art.
In the summer of 2016, he hosted a day-long event at his studio for
school teachers in Hachiōji to learn about kuruma ningyō’s history and
practice. The new textbook they use in their classes now has a small
section on kuruma ningyō in it, further encouraging locals to engage
with their regional art form.7
Nishikawa’s teaching methods contrast with an older model of
artistic education in Japan, known for its rules, rituals, and hierarchies.
Rather than the exacting system under which Nishikawa’s family
instructed him,8 which consisted mostly of watching others perform
and rehearse as the primary means of instruction and then copying,
Nishikawa’s workshops are full of jokes and laughter with the children
(eleven and up), frequent snacks, and plenty of explanation and
repetition so students can really grasp what they are being asked to do
and feel supported in practicing.9 Older ones model and lead the
younger ones in a supportive sempai (senior) and kohai (junior)
relationship, and Nishikawa frequently changes up the routine so that
they never get bored. Moreover, while the dance of the god Sanbasō,
which opens every puppet performance to ask for blessings and to
purify the space, used to be something that only the most senior
performers learned, it is now the first thing Nishikawa’s students try.10
The lively dance quickly plunges them into active puppetry in a way that
the more intricate details of the classical stories cannot, and so
immediately grabs their interest while teaching a number of essential
skills.
Nishikawa’s educational process contrasts notably with the story
celebrated bunraku performer, Yoshida Bungoro, writes in “Yoshida
Bungoro—An Artist Remembers” (1998) about his own training,
during which, when he was working the feet of a puppet, his master,
who was working the head and right arm as lead puppeteer, continually
12 Orenstein

kicked him with his heavy wooden shoes when he did not find Yoshida’s
work satisfactory. After many bruises, anger, and his coming close to
giving up, and deciding if he was kicked one more time “I am going to
knock him down, right on stage, right in the middle of the performance,
and run off forever” (p. 62), Yoshida was finally able to meet with his
teacher’s approval and understand his art. “I was ecstatic, and in that
instant I understood. Up until then I hadn’t put enough of myself into
the role ... Once I understood all this, I felt ashamed that I doubted my
master after all these years and had planned to disgrace him in such a
terrible way” (p. 62). In his workshops, however, Nishikawa must, in some
sense, “sell” the tradition to young people in order to get them involved
and keep them interested. I saw him bring this same congenial attitude to
his work when he taught and rehearsed his own company members and
coached an amateur sannin zukai group he has been working with for
years.11 It is neither in his interest nor in his nature to run the risk of
alienating or loosing any adherents of kuruma ningyō.
In both the children’s and teachers’ workshops I witnessed in
the summer of 2016, Nishikawa also showed himself to be a master
educator, who adds a bit of showmanship in balancing factual
explanations, jokes, and training. The school teacher’s presentation
adroitly parceled out, in alternation, information about the form,
short performance presentations, and opportunities for the teachers,
divided into four groups, to step on stage and handle the puppets, with
each teacher trial adding a new gesture or element to the collective
practice repertoire. Nishikawa is completely in his element in these
workshops and in rehearsals that find him demonstrating, with his
own body, the movements of the puppet, while simultaneously calling
out instructions to the puppeteers as he also sings through the
accompanying jōruri chanting text and music—a performance worth
watching in and of itself. A master performer is not always a skilled,
inviting teacher, but Nishikawa is both. In these endeavors, passing on
the tradition and appreciation for the art form is always in his sights. In
a promotional video for Shank’s Mare, Nishikawa movingly reflects on
his view of the future of his art, “In this production I’m trying to
crystallize the meaning of my life’s work, so that I can pass it along
to the next generation. We can try various things. But it is not for me to
decide what to keep or let go. That is something the next generation
will decide” (Lee 2016a). Nishikawa offers his training, knowledge,
and the beauty of his tradition for others to carry into the future, in
their own new directions. While preserving the form, he is also letting
go of it. It is a paradoxical, but generous, idea that sharing the art
with others without constraints holds the promise of offering it
new life.
SHANK’S MARE 13

The Shank’s Mare Collaboration

In contemplating the themes of “what we leave behind” and
“how traditions are passed on,” Tom Lee formed the loose structure of a
story about an old man, a medieval astronomer, and his young
apprentice, who take an arduous journey to catch a glimpse of a comet
that heralds the old man’s death. This tale formed the spine of Shank’s
Mare. Lee made a storyboard of the images and moments formulating
the journey that provided a starting point for conversations on the
production between Lee and Nishikawa, as well as between Lee and
myself as dramaturg.
Logistics and practical necessity, as much as Lee’s own creative
process, motivated outlining a solid structural framework for the piece
as the initial step in its development. Support for the first phase of the
process came from Sarah Lawrence College, where Lee was teaching.
He wove the project into one of his classes, with students making
projections and models for the show and practicing the kuruma ningyō
manipulation technique. Nishikawa would spend only two weeks at
Sarah Lawrence, at the end of which a work-in-progress public showing
was scheduled, so Lee needed to have something fairly concrete in
place before Nishikawa arrived. The primary questions that came up
around the storyboard therefore were, “What piece from the traditional
repertoire could Nishikawa bring into discussion with Lee’s storyline?”
and “How could these two stories be brought together?”
As Ruth Wikler, Curator and Producer of Portland, Oregon’s
Boom Arts once wisely told me, when she first began working on
international collaborations, “Any first collaboration is a process of
learning how to collaborate,” and, although Lee and Nishikawa had
known each other for almost a decade, the beginning of this creative
process involved both parties feeling out what the other wanted and
how the collaboration would progress. Lee took the lead, since he had
initiated the production, but he did not know how far Nishikawa would
feel comfortable experimenting with his own form or what he, as a
student of Nishikawa’s—following the Japanese teacher-disciple
relationship—might ask. The first workshop at Sarah Lawrence
demonstrated that, in an environment respectful of the kuruma ningyō
tradition, Nishikawa was willing and adept at performing with novice
young artists, teaching them in the process, using his own puppets in
slightly unconventional ways, and offering new ideas for the show and
transformations to his classical material as necessary. What began as a
process in which Nishikawa was to fit his traditional story into Lee’s
framework, moved to a more interactive, collaborative back-and-forth
exchange when the artists were together in the rehearsal room. This
14 Orenstein

give-and-take allowed the piece to grow into a more integrated

performance.
The story that Lee and Nishikawa settled on using from the
traditional kuruma ningyō repertoire was The Spider’s Thread, derived
from a Buddhist tale that was the basis for a 1918 short story by
Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The main character is Kandata, a sinful person,
who has committed only one good deed in his life: saving a spider he
was ready to crush to death. After Kandata’s own demise, Shakyamuni
Buddha sees him writhing in agony in the depths of Hell, and, because
of Kandata’s one act of compassion, Shakyamuni sends down a single
spider thread on which Kandata can climb out of Hell. However,
Kandata blows this one chance for mercy by once again demonstrating
his lack of compassion. When he sees other sinners climbing up with
him, he yells that the thread is for him alone. The slim thread breaks,
along with his possibility for salvation, sending him tumbling back to
the firmament. Through this story, Lee saw the opportunity to make a
connection between Kandata and his own Old Man character, by
contrasting how each moves through life and confronts death.
In the first workshop performance at Sarah Lawrence, Kandata
and the Old Man’s stories lived side by side in alternating scenes that
had not yet fully figured out how to speak to each other. However,
puppetry and performance styles had already begun to intertwine. Lee
placed a miniature village and forest downstage that he projected,
through live-feed, on the back wall as the visual setting for both tales.
While the background to some of Kandata’s scenes showed pagodas
and some of the Old Man’s medieval European village, both stories
used the same parts of the model that displayed trees and the natural
environment to give the impression of these two figures crossing each
other’s paths in a linked world, even if they shared no scenes together.
Lee had Nishikawa bring Kandata over to the downstage model at
several moments, to underline for the audience that the background
images were filmed in real time. On one occasion Kandata sets the spider
free, placing it into the model landscape. On another, he looms over the
tiny houses, yelling his outrage at the world. In this latter scene, Lee
mixed pre-recorded elements with the live projections so Kandata’s cries
appear as words in Japanese and English within cartoon bubbles on the
back wall. Lee’s goal of making a piece of visual storytelling that was
internationally accessible meant the show used no spoken language, only
these few projected words along with musical accompaniment.
The music offered another opportunity for intercultural
collaboration. Composer Bill Ruyle plays hammered dulcimer and
percussion combining his music with that of traditional artist Chieko
Hara on shamisen and shakuhachi flute. Culturally compatible motifs
SHANK’S MARE 15

FIGURE 2. In Shank’s Mare, Nishikawa Koryu V operates the puppet of Kandata,

who contemplates whether or not to destroy the spider that descends before
him. (Photo: Ayumi Sakamoto)

underscore some scenes, but the musical strains of both performers

interweave in an enveloping soundscape as the show progresses. The
music moves both journeys forward and expresses the emotional
dimensions of the stage moments. This musical accompaniment echoes
the use of the shamisen in jōruri, even while a wholly new musical
soundscape emerges.
16 Orenstein

Nishikawa stretched his own puppetry technique to meet Lee’s

more liberal use of kuruma ningyō, which mixes kuruma ningyō and
bunraku manipulation styles within a single puppet. For example, a
puppeteer on a wheeled-cart might, at one moment, perform a puppet
on his or her own in traditional kuruma ningyō style, but then a second
puppeteer might step in to assist with the left arm. Lee’s puppets—
carved by Kevin White and clothed by Katherine Ferrier—are not built
to allow the puppeteer’s left thumb to move the puppet’s left arm as in
kuruma ningyō. The head puppeteer might also get off his cart to move
the puppet while another puppeteer comes to assist moving the
puppet’s legs, or two more puppeteers might join to complete a full
bunraku sannin zukai style of manipulation. Lee staged the piece using
various combinations of one, two, and three puppeteer manipulation
on a single character as necessity and aesthetics dictated for any stage
moment, with smooth choreographed transitions throughout. In one
particularly beautiful scene, the Old Man and his young apprentice
wander through the mountains by means of an ensemble of puppeteers
lined up kneeling on the ground who, as the head puppeteers carry the
figures above them, take turns moving the puppets’ feet, passing them
along, one to the next, for an action of continuous traveling.
Nishikawa’s traditional puppets were not subject to this
complete array of manipulation techniques, but his radiant Shakya-
muni Buddha, draped in gold, floats onto the stage through the air,
carried aloft by two puppeteers, one operates the head and right arm
while another operates the left arm. Held up, center stage, Shakyamuni
appears to hover in his heavens while the puppeteers bring his hands
together as he benevolently surveys the world below, represented by an
upside-down silver bowl. The floating effect here is not simply a by-
product of the manipulation technique, as in bunraku, but is also driven
by a directorial choice based on the story and character, as well as the
capabilities of the performers and puppets. To meet Lee’s directorial
image, Nishikawa eschewed his cart and kuruma ningyō technique for
this moment. In another example, both the Old Man and Kandata each
make a difficult journey up a mountain in the last moments of their
respective lives.12 The Old Man’s ascension is rewarded by his vision of
the comet he seeks while Kandata falls off the mountain to his death.
Kandata’s climb requires the kuruma ningyō puppeteer to get off his cart
and continue to operate the head and arms while another puppeteer
helps with the feet to illustrate fully Kandata’s struggle up the
mountainside. Nishikawa’s combination of skills, his training in
bunraku, from two years at the National Bunraku Theatre training
program, as well as kuruma ningyō, allows him to orchestrate and
execute such actions. During the Japan tour, in this scene, Lee
SHANK’S MARE 17

manipulated Kandata’s feet to Nishikawa’s work as head puppeteer,

bringing teacher and disciple together in a theatrical moment that was
the product of both of their artistic accomplishments.
The Sarah Lawrence workshop in April 2015, provided a good
foundation for the ongoing collaborative process, while revealing work
that still needed to be done. In August, Lee along with Josh Rice, a
Sarah Lawrence graduate student, who became a lead puppeteer on the
show, traveled to Japan for ten days of in-depth discussions in
preparation for two further workshops which Nishikawa could not
attend, one at the Carriage House in New York in September 2015 and
one at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Florida in
October 2015. The show was set to premiere at LaMama in November
2015, at which time Nishikawa would have only ten days in New York to
work with the others before opening night. During the August trip, the
artists focused on ways to bring the two stories closer together, and
created a new character, a stag, a magical creature that both the Old
Man and Kandata could encounter. Their different interactions with
the stag—the Old Man caressing it and Kandata attacking it—serve to
contrast the characters’ temperaments while uniting them within the same
symbolic world.

FIGURE 3. During the performance of Shank’s Mare, the stag puppet comes
downstage to look over the model that, through live-feed, is projected on the
back wall as the setting for the show. (Photo: Ayumi Sakamoto)
18 Orenstein

Another opportunity for connecting the two puppet styles came

from a visit backstage at the National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka, where
Nishikawa introduced Lee to Kinta Ban, the wigmaker who makes the
hairpieces for both the Bunraku and Nishikawa’s puppets. She agreed
to create wigs for Lee’s puppets as well. Her beautifully crafted
headpieces provided an aesthetic link between Lee and Nishikawa’s
figures on stage, even though the characters sport culturally different
hairstyles.13 In puppetry, the materiality of the object itself is always
center stage, and the choice to have the New York puppets’ hair created
through the same time-honored techniques as the Japanese puppets’
hair brought a shared material essence to the figures onstage, in spite of
the many differences between them.
Between the workshops, Lee sent Nishikawa video clips of the
rehearsals and presentations along with emails that were translated by
Hiyama Kanako to make sure that the nuances of important questions
and decisions were accurately conveyed.14 The company of performers,
with some different members coming and going, also included, among
its U.S. contingent, Kitamura Takemi, who is Japanese but has lived in
New York for over a decade, and Leah Ogawa, a bilingual Sarah
Lawrence student (now graduated), who grew up half in Japan and half
in the United States.15 Nishikawa’s brother, Nishikawa Ryuiji, joined the

FIGURE 4. Tom Lee’s Old Man and Girl puppets in Shank’s Mare, carved by
Kevin White and clothed by Katherine Ferrier, but with hair crafted by The
National Bunraku Theatre’s Kinta Ban. (Photo: Ayumi Sakamoto)
SHANK’S MARE 19

cast in New York and in Japan, where Nishikawa’s son and young
company member, Sugawara Yoshiteru, also came on board, forming a
culturally integrated troupe.
For the premier at LaMama some important changes were made
to the show. In order to balance the stories and create clearer motivations
for Kandata’s evil actions, Lee and Nishikawa gave him a young son,
introduced in the first scene. In this scene, Kandata, promoted from
street bully to samurai for the opening sequence (he would fall on hard
times later, during the course of the action), teaches his son samurai
sword fighting techniques. This short scene, moving and funny,
demonstrates Kandata passing on his knowledge to the next generation
just as the Old Man does in a later scene, when he teaches his young
apprentice to read time by the stars using an astrolabe (done with human
actors in shadow behind a projection of the constellations). The added
opening sequence showed Kandata’s anger at the world deriving from
the subsequent events when he carries on the young boy’s limp body as
he calls for help and then mourns at the boy’s graveside as, (through a
projection on the screen behind), he recalls the boy being slain by a
hotheaded swordsman. These scenes, not part of Nishikawa’s traditional
material, took on added poignancy in Japan where the young boy was
puppeteered by Nishikawa’s son. During rehearsals in Japan, we
witnessed the double image the puppet of Kandata teaching his son
sword fighting as Nishikawa instructed his own son in executing the stage
action. Lee’s eleven-year old daughter, Solvej, also joined the company in
New York and Japan, working as puppeteer and performing the role of
the young apprentice in the star-gazing shadow scene. In these ways,
Shank’s Mare was not just a show about passing on tradition, but one that
accomplished the fact in very concrete terms as Nishikawa and Lee
brought their children into the process.16
The audiences and context of presentation at LaMama in New
York and at Ichio Hall in Hachiōji, Japan could not have been more
different. Shank’s Mare’s debut, inaugurating LaMama’s newest
performance space, The Downstairs, brought out members of New
York’s avant-garde theatre scene. In Hachiōji, by contrast, the central
suburban performance hall attracted a more conventional group of
Japanese theatre-goers, including some women who came dressed in
kimono. Many were elderly and more familiar with traditional Japanese
performing arts than avant-garde performance. Some were long-time
supporters of Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō or people who studied or
trained with Nishikawa.
In both the New York and Japan presentations, the Hachiōji
Kuruma Ningyō puppeteers performed Sanbasō, a ritual dance
purifying the space of performance, before Shank’s Mare. A version
20 Orenstein

FIGURE 5. Nishikawa Koryu rehearses Shank’s Mare’s opening scene between

father and son characters with his own son. (Photo: Claudia Orenstein)

of Sanbasō precedes many traditional performances in Japan, including

nō, where it is, itself, prefaced by two other sacred dances: Okina (Old
Man) and Senzai (A Thousand Years Old). Sanbasō, literally “Third Old
Man,” is, among these three dancing deities, the one closest to humans,
empathizing with and even partaking in their frailties and struggles,
SHANK’S MARE 21

and therefore, special to the puppet theatre, where humble, mundane

gestures of human life find expression.17 He is responsible for the fertility
of the earth, which gives essential sustenance. As Sanbasō jumps, pushing
against the ground, he prepares the fields for planting and regeneration,
an act he can do particularly well in kuruma ningyō where he stomps
directly on the earth. His purification of the performance space initiates
enactments that connect all living things with each other and the divine.
The Sanbasō dance was another way in which Shank’s Mare embraced the
traditional form. The presence of Shakyamuni as a character in Shank’s
Mare also echoed the theme of connection between the human and the
divine expressed through Sanbasō.18
The Hachiōji program reached out to its Japanese audience by
including, (after the Sanbasō but before Shank’s Mare), a short interview
with Nishikawa and Lee conducted by bunraku expert Hideki Takagi.19
The artists discussed their different motivations behind creating the
piece, the projections and video features the audience would see, and
Lee’s team demonstrated how his cart and puppet manipulation
differed from traditional kuruma ningyō, showing the Old Man puppet’s
fluid transition from one person to two and three person manipulation.
While exploring new models, Nishikawa makes sure not to
alienate his base audience but, rather, cultivates their continued
support. At the end of every performance in Japan, he hurried the
company members to grab their puppets and go out to the lobby to
greet and thank the spectators. At the Iida International Puppetry
Festival, where Shank’s Mare finished its Japan tour, this convention
proved common to most of the shows performing there, but it is also in
keeping with Nishikawa’s continued attention to and widening of his
circle of supporters. While LaMama’s audiences are not only used to
seeing unusual performances, but seek out cutting edge theatre,
Nishikawa’s audience follow more familiar fare and need to be drawn
gracefully into new theatrical territory. In the promotional film for the
show, Nishikawa says, “Tom’s approach and his aesthetic towards beauty
is something I can completely relate to. I did not fully appreciate this
before I came to this country [US], but now I can understand what a
great artistic sense Tom has” (Tom Lee 2016a). This shared artistic
sensibility helped Nishikawa not only meld into the creation process
and performance of Shank’s Mare, but share this work with his home
audience with confidence.
Nishikawa’s care for his followers is in keeping with his third
professional role, along with that of performer and teacher, that of
iemoto, or household head of Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō, a title passed on
through his family. He treats his company members like family,
gathering whoever is working or helping out each day for a shared
22 Orenstein

lunch. There is a constant feeling of camaraderie between Nishikawa

and those who participate in any way in his projects and endeavors. He
extended this feeling of being an inside member of the group, an
important social condition in Japan, to everyone involved in Shank’s
Mare as we also simultaneously occupied the role of honored guests
from outside. This was especially apparent when we stayed in his
mother’s home in Hachiōji and ate meals together as we rehearsed and
performed. Nishikawa brought us to a festival display of fireworks and a
Buddhist ceremony at Takao Temple, where his family has close ties.
Even when the tour moved to Iida City, Nishikawa acted as leader and
host at every turn. Rehearsing, eating, touring, and traveling together
solidified the integration of the artistic collaboration outside of the
performance in very fundamental ways and gave us to understand that
we had been adopted into the extended family of Hachiōji Kuruma
Ningyō collaborators. Although Tom Lee initiated this collaborative
project, Nishikawa embraced it, not only as an artistic experiment, but
also as an opportunity to build a larger circle of performers,
productions, and fans for his home company.
Conclusion
The transcultural journey of Shank’s Mare was not just one of
intercultural collaboration, but a process that feeds back into
supporting the traditional art of kuruma ningyō. While kuruma ningyō
may not have the same national stature in Japan or comparable
international recognition as bunraku, Nishikawa instead has the liberty
to take his tradition in new directions and engage in novel projects that
move kuruma ningyō into fresh artistic territory. He sees that these
projects can be built on classical training and techniques and help
foster greater interest in the classical form itself, bolstering, rather than
weakening the tradition’s possibility of surviving into the future at a
high artistic level. As Nishikawa said,

I believe kuruma ningyō has limitless potential. We would like to

collaborate with as many artists as we possibly could and love to
encounter more opportunities to create the new works with them.
(Nishikawa 2016)

Notably, Shank’s Mare was not born of some government program

to preserve traditional arts, but from the mutual love and respect both
teacher and student have for a beautiful art form and the desire on both
sides to use their respective skills and talents to invigorate it.
Nishikawa works to connect both older and younger generations
to his art by, on the one hand, taking pains gently to introduce older
audiences to new work and, on the other, drawing young students to the
SHANK’S MARE 23

tradition with novel projects and lively workshops. He brings a generous

spirit to the work, sharing kuruma ningyō with anyone who wants to
engage with it, and extending to them the sense of belonging to a family
and community built around the work. This is not exactly the
expectation one might have of traditional Japanese performing arts,
with their reputation for strict hierarchies and formal conventions. By
tending to the roots, the center, and the branches of his tradition,
Nishikawa endeavors to keep the entire world of kuruma ningyō, vibrant
and flowering.20
Even as I complete this article, Nishikawa is in Korea setting the
foundations for a new collaboration. He writes,

P.S. Am still in Korea. One of my friends here has a theater company

and they would like to dance Korean traditional “Aliran” [Arirang]
with kuruma ningyō. So we are practicing together. (Nishikawa 2016)

NOTES

1. I worked as dramaturg for Shank’s Mare from the beginning of the

collaborative process through the end and accompanied the show on its tour
to Japan, where I was enlisted to perform as part of the ensemble. A good deal
of the background to this article derives from my work on the show and my
research in Japan in July–August 2016. Support for the project was provided by
a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The
City University of New York, and a Hunter College Presidential Travel Grant. I
am grateful for both.
2. Unless otherwise indicated, information on the history of kuruma
ningyō is from Nishikawa Koryu V and quotes come from my interview with him
in 2017.
3. The major exception to this is, of course, the National Bunraku
Theatre. It is itself, via a winding path, a descendent of the puppet theatre
started by Uemura Bunrakuken in Osaka in 1805, whose success resulted in the
use of the term “bunraku” as the term for the form overall, especially when this
company became the last remaining troupe in the Osaka area around 1893. In
1909, Bunraku-za was absorbed by the Shochiku entertainment production
company until 1963, when it broke that association and came to be operated by
the Bunraku Association. Bunraku became part of the National Theatre’s
offerings at their theatre in Tokyo in 1966, and had its own puppet theatre
finally built in Osaka in 1984, solidifying a home base for a troupe and
performances in sannin zukai.
4. According to Nishikawa Koryu V, today sekkyō-bushi along with
shinnai-bushi, tokiwazu-bushi, icchuu-bushi, and bunya-bushi might all be loosely
termed forms of jōruri.
5. At the Shank’s Mare performance in Hachiōji’s Icho Hall, a bevy
of Hachiōji Kuruma Ningyō company members and supporters assisted
24 Orenstein

backstage, in the front of the house, and in the light booth with setting up,
bringing the artists food, selling company paraphernalia, taking names for the
mailing list, cleaning up, and various other tasks.
6. The company currently consists of four members in their sixties,
three in their fifties, one forty year old, one thirty year old, and four in their
twenties.
7. The immediate area celebrates the local tradition with the image of a
kuruma ningyō Sanbasō puppet on all the manhole covers in the town.
Municipalities throughout Japan have their own unique manhole cover images
representing some aspect of the local culture.
8. On asking for further clarification of how traditional instruction
took place when he was a child, Nishikawa offered the interesting piece of
information that in most traditional forms it is not actually the father who
teaches his own child, but the grandfather or the uncles, because it is difficult
for a father to treat his own son objectively as a pupil, so it is easier for other
family members to give the child instruction.
9. The otome bunraku summer children’s workshop I witnessed at
Hitomiza in Tokyo, in July 2016, took a similar approach. This company is also
introducing many children to their traditional form during the summer
holidays to spread an understanding of the art, attract new audiences, and
hopefully find some students who want to pursue ongoing training. Girls and
boys participated in the workshop, although otome bunraku is a women’s form.
10. I witnessed a similar practice at the Hitomiza otome bunraku summer
workshop for children, which also had the students begin their training with
the Sanbasō puppet.
11. Nishikawa trained for two years in the National Bunraku Theatre’s
training program to perfect his own skills, and he coaches a number of groups
in sannin zukai technique.
12. In the different versions of the show, over the course of its
development, the mountain was represented in different ways, sometimes by a
stack of black boxes, sometimes by four painted black flats, each increasing in
size, and, for the Japanese tour, these same styled flats were used, but painted
colorfully in the traditional manner of bunraku or kabuki style mountain set
pieces. They were built by Nishikawa’s brother, Nishikawa Ryuji, who is a
professional carpenter, and painted by a woman who trains with Nishikawa who
is a professional animator.
13. Kandata, cast as a former samurai, wears a traditional chonmage or
top knot. Lee’s Old Man sports his long white hair in a loose ponytail along
with a flowing white beard. The Young Girl has her long brown hair in a
ponytail.
14. Lee’s Japanese and Nishikawa’s English are roughly at the same
moderate level (Nishikawa’s English comprehension may be a bit better) and
allow them a good ability for exchange, but a translator was always in the
rehearsal room so detailed ideas could be fully discussed.
15. Leah Ogawa did not join the Japan tour. Other U.S. company
members on the tour included C.B. Goodman, Josh Rice, and Chris Carcione,
SHANK’S MARE 25

who worked all the projections. Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew did the lighting. Lake
Simons, Justin Perkins and Sakai Kiku also worked as puppeteers, helping to
develop the show and performed in New York.
16. In Japan, many Hachiōji company members and supporters were
visibly excited to have Nishikawa’s son performing onstage, perhaps as a sign of
his interest in continuing the tradition. Lee was also very invested in training
his daughter, incorporating her into scenes whenever possible and including
her in every aspect of company life and the tour.
17. Nishikawa offered me this explanation of the importance of Sanbasō
to puppetry during the rehearsals for Shank’s Mare at LaMama, November
2015. Every traditional puppet company I saw in Japan had their own version of
Sanbasō. These performances are particularly prevalent at New Year.
18. The spider that Shakyamuni puts into the world at the very opening
of the play is discovered and set free by the Young Girl in one scene, in echo of
Kandata’s gesture, further linking the two lines of action.
19. Hideki Takagi does the commentary in Japanese for the Bunraku
National Theatre. One can listen to his insights about the performance on
earphones while watching the show.
20. Nishikawa extends his care for his own company to the larger world
of traditional Japanese puppetry by hosting a puppetry festival at his home
theatre every March, inviting traditional performers from all over Japan to
perform, and through his coaching of amateur sannin zukai groups,
mentioned earlier. He is very respected by puppeteers throughout Japan.

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